This one was particularly fun because Paul Langlois, chief cook at a Detroit firehouse, sent in his family raisin pie recipe to the newspaper. I’ve never heard of sour cream fruit pies, but it apparently won a contest — worth a taste, certainly.

Mixing was easy. Sour cream, sugar, and everything else in one quick bowl.

Of course, I had to spend about thirty minutes quartering raisins before that easy mixing stage. Seriously, cutting little dried fruit into even littler pieces… at least I could do it while watching TV.

I screwed up the meringue a bit — made it slightly earlier than I should have, let it sit for a little, and it started to collapse. Meringue with no cream of tartar isn’t particularly stable, and it wept a lot after baking.

But it was still lovely and brown on top, and cooked through.

Buzz was rather happy that we started the month off with a sweet fruit pie, not a savory one. (I didn’t mention the sour cream at first.)

“Oooh, this is raisin pie.”

After another couple of bites, he said it was surprisingly spicy. “Lot of cloves in this, huh?”

“Well, Paul Langlois’ mother liked it. This is a pie for families, not firefighters.”

Another bite. “Mmmm-hmmm.”

Verdict: Sweet, gooey goodness.

Tasting notes:

Good raisin flavor and nice texture contrast with the meringue on top. The cloves and cinnamon were on the strong side, but did help balance out the super-sweet sugar levels. The sour cream could have been a bit less sweet, since there was meringue on top. Overall it’s a neat way to enjoy raisins.

Erica was inspired to learn to cook by a complete lack of home economics classes in high school, and a love of old books. When using antique cookbooks to teach herself some skills, she realized a lot of the recipes were pretty strange by modern standards. All that fun testing just begged to be shared with the world. Regular recipe testing can be found here on Mid-Century Menu, on Erica's Retro Recipe Attempts blog, and also I Ate The 80's.

Maybe it’s just me, but raisin pie–especially with sour cream–just doesn’t tickle my fancy! I’ve never been a fan of the weird, gummy chewiness of raisins. I can totally get behind the OTHER grape-related pie recipe on this site so far!

I like that the newspaper recipe says “his pie is exclusively for family enjoyment.” I wonder why they thought that caveat was necessary. I wonder what happened to single persons living alone who attempted to enjoy this pie.

Where I live in Montana, we eat a lot of sour cream raisin pie because, back in the day, before refrigeration, people were desperate for fruit pies in January but didn't have much fruit. I have recipes for "mock apple" made with Ritz crackers and cinnamon pie for those fruit free days.

I told my mother about this and she warned, “be very careful serving raisin pies, make sure you have plenty of available bathrooms.” She then told me of a time when a raisin pie was served at a party and the guests were then later rushing for bathrooms. So… any feedback on the aftermath of the tasting?